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We've all seen the recent "Bing It On" commercials spearheaded by Microsoft in a bid to become the most popular search engine. The latest commercial is shot in Topeka, Kansas--the same town that changed its name to Google for a month back in 2010--where the host surveys what appears to be regular folks on a side-by-side comparison of popular search engines Google and Bing. As no shock to anyone, Bing beats out Google with a unanimous vote. I must admit, although both sites are practically carbon copies of each other, Bing does look more attractive than Google, primarily due to... Continue reading

With over 150 million users, Instagram will monetize its popularity by selling ad space to high profile clients like Levi's and Ben & Jerry's. According to Evelyn Rusli of The Wall Street Journal, Instagram will start rolling its ads out in about a year. So prepare yourself for perfectly packaged, and marketed pictures to infiltrate your feed. You're probably asking yourself how Instagram has lasted this long without ads. It's simple: a lack of organization. After acquiring it over a year ago, Facebook sent in one of its own, Emily White, to get things in order. Instagram did not run... Continue reading

Schools have begun contracting internet monitoring services to track students on social media for cyberbullying. Schools are specifically targeting Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for any signs of misconduct or cries for help. In the NBC article “Careful what you tweet: Police, schools tap social media to track behavior,” written by Helen A. S. Popkin, says “The Twitter firehouse — previously open to only the likes of search engines such as Google and Bing — blasts everything publicly available on Twitter ... in real time.” And for an undisclosed fee, schools are able access this large database. Glendale School District of... Continue reading

Criminals such as terrorists, gangs, prostitutes and petty thieves are using social media as a platform for recruiting and showing off. According to USA Today, criminals are now offering behind-the-scene looks into their operations. Extremist group al-shabaab tweeted their mall siege in Kenya recently. They taunted the government, defended the mass killing, and threatened further action. Everything was posted to Twitter—in 140 characters or less—until their accounts were deleted. Until they created new accounts and continued their keyboard assault. It has gotten easier for gangs to recruit young hopefuls with Twitter’s global reach. Gangs express loyalty by posting their official... Continue reading

Initial reports by CNN, NBC, and CBS reported the name of one of the three suspects in the Washington Navy Yard shooting while scrambling to pinpoint the exact number of deaths, according toPaul Farhi of The Washington Post . These suspects and numbers fluctuated throughout the day. Why is the news getting their info wrong? The bottom line: Reporters are clamoring to break news without fact-checking their sources just to say they were first. With Twitter, Reddit and traditional media on a race for first place, it’s easy to jumble together facts and sources, and birth a big heaping mess... Continue reading

Advertisers are getting sneaky by disguising what they call “native advertising” ads as original website content. “Native advertising” is a web advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user's experience. Some experts lament the pesky posts, arguing that it undermines professional journalism while confusing readers with familiar “headlines, art, and text configurations” as regular posts. David Carr, writer of the New York Times article, “Storytelling Ads May Be Journalism’s New Peril,” warns us that this new type of advertising could potentially effect the journalistic credibility of a website. In... Continue reading

Professor of Journalism at NYU, Jay Rosen, defines citizen journalists as regular people who use press tools to inform each other. And with the invent of the internet, sharing video content with one another has only helped tremendously, both with visibility and speed. Just about anyone with a camera phone can record and upload a video within a matter of minutes, and in minutes have it seen by thousands of people. While compiling a list of genres within citizen journalism, I looked no further than the popular social media tool, Youtube. Truthloader, a Youtube channel of investigative and citizen journalism,... Continue reading

Traditional campaigns are obsolete in the age of Twitter. Mostly because today’s high-tech generation is extremely young. David Carr wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times titled “Campaign Journalism In the Age Of Twitter,” highlighting the disconnect between traditional campaign procedures and content-hungry reporters. He interviewed and pulled mostly from Peter Hamby, a political reporter at CNN, who conducted a 95 page study at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard about new media journalists and their impact on social media, especially Twitter. His research revealed that since the 2008 election, you were able to read the morning paper's headline... Continue reading